Philadelphia Story: Geno Pays His Respects To Dr. Jack

May 01, 2014|Jeff Jacobs

Geno Auriemma's favorite player of all-time is Walt Frazier. He loved the way Frazier played on both ends of the basketball court. He loved the way he won championships. Most of all, Frazier did it with the undeniable cool that made a young guy from Norristown, Pa., say, "Man, I want to be Clyde."

"When you're a kid, you think anything is possible," Auriemma said Thursday, the day they buried Jack Ramsay in Naples, Fla. "I said if I could be anyone in the basketball world, I want to be Clyde. Who's better than him in everything, right? I also could never be Walt Frazier."

"When I got inducted into the Hall of Fame, I thought about how I wanted somebody who represents all the things I can aspire to be. I can aspire to be the kind of person and teacher Dr. Jack was. I can aspire to have that kind of influence on the game, a man who left such a big imprint on the coaching profession. Yeah, I can aspire to be Jack Ramsay."

So after the UConn women's coach was told he had been elected to the Basketball Hall of Fame in 2006, the folks in Springfield asked Auriemma who he wanted as his presenter at the induction ceremony. Auriemma had his own question: "Do you think Dr. Jack would do it? They said, 'Absolutely.' They gave me his number. I talked to him. He was thrilled. I was the happiest guy in the world when he said yes."

"To tell you the truth, maybe he was a little taken aback. Here's this younger guy [Auriemma was 52 at the time] coaching women's basketball. I wasn't in his world. I didn't coach the NBA. I didn't coach men's basketball in college. I wasn't a player he coached against. I was just a guy from the Philly area who looked up to him. I think maybe he almost thought he was doing a favor for his grandson or something. But there's nobody more gracious than Dr. Jack."

The wire reports say that Pat Riley, Erik Spoelstra, Billy Cunningham, Bob McAdoo, Phil Martelli, Ramsay's son-in-law Jim O'Brien, not to mention many broadcasting colleagues, were among those who filled St. John the Evangelist Church for funeral services. Some men have coaching trees. Dr. Jack had a coaching forest. Ramsay counted hundreds of friends in the game and Auriemma, who was in Washington to attend a White House reception Thursday, would never be so presumptuous as to count himself among Ramsay's closest. Yet there are few who wanted more to be like Dr. Jack.

That's why in 2006, awaiting his Hall of Fame induction, Auriemma said, "Just to be in the same spot, the same time with someone that I grew up thinking invented the game is pretty special to me."

That's why when word spread Monday that Ramsay had died at 89, Auriemma tweeted, "We lost a giant of a man. Anyone who has ever touched a basketball should say a prayer."

"Jack brought a certain dignity to the coaching profession that a lot of guys had back in the day," Auriemma said. "We've kind of forgotten that in the era of the big money we make, the attention we get. We sometimes forget that there are a lot of guys Jack's age who were looked upon as faculty members."

"They did it for the love of the game. They taught the game. They weren't coaching for the next job. They weren't coaching for the shoe deal. They weren't coaching to move to ESPN and have all the great quips and being a TV star. They really were molders of young men."

Ramsay grew up in Milford before his family moved to Upper Darby, Pa., and went on to St. Joe's. Auriemma, of course, went in the other geographic direction. Geno played for Buddy Gardler at Bishop Kenrick High. Gardler played at St. Joe's. That's how he became aware of the Ramsay legend.

"I became a St. Joe's fanatic like most Hawks fanatics," Auriemma said.

Later there would be clinics and camps. Ramsay, Chuck Daley, Jack McKinney, Dick Harter, Paul Westhead, this was a cradle of great coaching. Ramsey won 234 games in college, including trips to the Final Four and Elite Eight with St. Joe's. He won 864 games coaching in the pros. He was the GM of the 1968 76ers of Wilt Chamberlain. He coached the Portland Trail Blazers of Bill Walton to the NBA title in 1977. Ramsay, inducted into the Hall of Fame in 1992, was selected one of the 10 greatest coaches during the NBA's 50th anniversary in 1996.

"You get a master's degree, a doctorate from Penn [in education], for a basketball coach like me, that's like talking to somebody who went to the moon," Auriemma said. "His fitness exploits were legendary. The marathons, triathlons, swims he'd take in the ocean at his South Jersey summer home, the long bike rides."